A Stroll Through Hollywood’s Gaudy Early Era

Hollywood, like Halloween, is a festival of masks--celluloid images that portray eras and souls gone by. So Halloween, with its annual ritual of impersonation and disguise, seems a fitting time to explore this rich urban landscape.

Perhaps no other place so epitomizes the spirit and lore of Hollywood as the areas around Melrose Avenue and Gower Street. Long-established institutions like Paramount and Western Costume provide windows into the film industry’s nostalgic past and workaday present. Nearly hidden behind walls north of Paramount sits Hollywood Memorial Park, one of the world’s most-visited cemeteries. Many of the founders of Hollywood--the district and the industry--rest beneath its soaring palms.

Walking Tour of the Past

The following self-guided walking tour will lead you through the settings of Hollywood’s rich and traumatic past.

Begin the two-hour walk at the corner of Gower Street and Melrose Avenue. Because the Memorial Park closes at 4:30 p.m., you ought to begin the walk before 2 p.m. to allow time to meander amid its park-like grounds. Various cafes nearby on Melrose Avenue offer ideal settings for an early dinner afterward.

Melrose Avenue marks the southern boundary of Hollywood, an independent city from 1903 to 1910 but now a district of Los Angeles.

These small duplexes and bungalows around Melrose were built in the 1920s to accommodate Hollywood’s burgeoning population. In 1910 the city was a quiet, reserved town of 5,000 settlers, mostly from the Midwest. Lemon groves surrounded large homes reminiscent of Indiana; pepper trees lined narrow lanes stretching into the hills.

But with the film industry’s sudden growth, the population increased 720% in 10 years to 36,000. By 1930 more than 160,000 people resided in Hollywood, many of them hoping to hit it big in the movie industry.

Architecturally, this neighborhood remains nearly intact from those years of explosive growth. Its style attests to the 1920s’ romantic infatuation with Mediterranean-style architecture.

As you stroll, enjoy the detail: Tile roofs shadow walls of plain stucco surfaces marked by arched doorways and windows. Decorative wrought-iron lanterns, balconies and window grilles combine with colorful tiles on stairways and steps. Walk south on Gower Street, left on Clinton Street, left on Beachwood Drive, right on Melrose, right on Plymouth Boulevard, left on Clinton, left on Windsor Boulevard, and right again on Melrose. On the way you will pass Lucy’s El Adobe Cafe at 5536 Melrose, once Gov. Jerry Brown’s favorite haunt with his former companion, singer Linda Ronstadt.

At the southeast corner of Windsor and Melrose stands an odd complex resembling a medieval abbey in Seville. Currently the Walter Allen Plant Rental, which rents vegetation to studios, it once housed Lucey’s, one of Hollywood’s swankest cafes in the 1920s and ‘30s. Besides the studio employees and stars, Louella Parsons frequented Lucey’s to garner tidbits for her gossip column. In 1942, the cafe closed.

At Melrose and Bronson Avenue stands Raleigh Studios. In 1914, Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players leased the horse barns that originally occupied the site to make “A Girl From Yesterday” with Mary Pickford. In 1915, theater owner William H. Clune purchased the property and built rental studios for lease to independent production companies. Here Douglas Fairbanks made “The Mark of Zorro” and “The Three Musketeers” in the 1920s, Walt Disney rented space in the ‘30s and the “Hopalong Cassidy” television series was filmed in the ‘50s--as were “Superman” episodes. Robert Aldrich shot “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” and Ronald Reagan hosted “Death Valley Days” at Raleigh.

World’s Largest Costume Firm

Walk across the street and into the lobby of Western Costume Company--the world’s largest costume house--at 5335 Melrose Avenue. Its founder, L. L. Burns, a trader with considerable knowledge of Indian dress and lore, arrived in Los Angeles in 1912. Shortly thereafter Burns met cowboy star William S. Hart and began designing Indian costumes for Hart’s movies. Burns’ business boomed with Hollywood and in 1932 he moved from downtown Los Angeles to this warehouse. Today, Western has more than 1 million costume pieces valued at more than $25 million. Western continues to rent to major studios and, as you can see from the Halloween frenzy, they rent to the public as well.

Walk up Bronson Avenue to the wrought-iron gates of Paramount Pictures. Many recognize this entrance from Billy Wilder’s classic film “Sunset Boulevard,” in which Gloria Swanson, as the aging silent film queen Norma Desmond, drives to the gate to see Cecil B. DeMille.

Paramount, the last major studio remaining in Hollywood, traces its roots to “The Squaw Man,” the first full-length feature made in Hollywood in 1913. Its makers, Jesse Lasky, Samuel Goldwyn and Cecil B. DeMille, collaborated on other films at their studio near Selma Avenue and Vine Street. In 1916 Lasky merged with Adolph Zukor, creating the Famous Players-Lasky Corp. To relieve its overcrowded Vine Street facilities, the studio moved to the present location in 1926 and renamed itself Paramount-Famous-Lasky, later shortened to Paramount Pictures.

Here legends were born. Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Veronica Lake and Betty Hutton were just a few of Paramount’s stars. In the ‘40s, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour filmed the “Road” pictures here. Their directors included Cecil B. DeMille, Josef von Sternberg, Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder.

Across the street stands another landmark: Cafe Legends, a cafe frequented by studio people by day; a cabaret at night. For more than 50 years this was the site of Oblath’s, once a private commissary for the stars and then a Mexican restaurant. Gloria Swanson reportedly persuaded Joseph Kennedy, the father of President John F. Kennedy and one of the founders of RKO, to bring Oblath’s, then a popular lunch counter on Vine Street, to the present location in 1926. The present cafe honors Swanson with a charcoal portrait in the entrance.

Walk west on Marathon Street to Valentino Place, named after the “world’s greatest lover” and one of Paramount’s early stars. A persistent claim in Hollywood is that Rudolph Valentino once lived in the Tudor-styled apartment building on the corner, where a tunnel, now sealed, allowed the actor unrestricted access to the studio. However, since the building was constructed in 1927, the Valentino stories are fanciful myths; he died in 1926.

Walk past Orza’s, one of L.A.’s few Romanian restaurants. Studio workers frequent Orza’s for its homemade specialties and its cozy, homey atmosphere.

Turn right on Melrose and walk past Paramount’s new gates, designed in the 1920s style of the rest of the studio. Peer inside at the backdrop of the sky, noting also how expansive the lot is with its sound stages and roads.

Melrose, with its traffic, eateries, sound editing and film labs, portrays the “working” Hollywood. The commercial strip is noisy and gritty; the glamour associated with Hollywood escapes the eye.

Elegant Moderne

At 5505, however, stands the area’s most elegant building. The Streamline Moderne-style structure, embellished with black, green and yellow tiles and porthole windows, houses film labs and agencies and Nickodell’s Restaurant. Popular with studio folk since it was established in 1928, Nickodell’s offers a huge menu.

KHJ radio and television studios are headquartered in a simpler Moderne building at 5515 Melrose. Continue walking to Gower.

Above you rises the trademark symbol--an enormous stucco globe--of RKO Studios. Hundreds of films once were produced on its sound stages. In 1925 Joseph P. Kennedy was the principal owner of FBO Studios, which occupied the site. Kennedy merged FBO in 1928 with Pathe Pictures and the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater group to form Radio Keith Orpheum. At that time, RKO’s logo was a radio tower flashing neon bolts of lightning atop the globe. Now only the globe remains. RKO produced the memorable “King Kong” (1933) and “Citizen Kane” (1941). Its megastars included Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Gary Cooper and the Marx Brothers. In 1948 Howard Hughes bought RKO and sold it in 1956 to Desilu Studios. Finally, in 1967, Paramount bought and merged the RKO lots with their studios.

Walk north on Gower along the stark walls of Paramount. Various entrances and setbacks offer glimpses into the film factory; if you time it right, huge sound-stage doors will open to reveal lights and sets, studio workers and actors.

At the Beth Olam gateway opposite Willoughby Avenue, enter Hollywood Memorial Park and come into another world. The park is the final resting place of more than 73,000.

Abbey of the Psalms

Follow the road to the left, walking north to the entrance court of the Abbey of the Psalms, a huge mausoleum. Its elaborate front, with lotus-blossom capitals atop columns, battered walls, cavetto cornice and vulture-and-sun-disk symbol, is reminiscent of the gateway into an Egyptian temple.

Inside are buried Norma and Constance Talmadge, two of the greatest silent-screen actresses; director Victor Fleming (“Gone With the Wind” and “The Wizard of Oz”) ; pioneer film director Jesse Lasky, “Our Gang” star Darla Jean Hood and Hollywood promoter Charles Toberman, among others.

Continue walking north and turn right, walking past the statue of Cupid and Psyche, which, by the way, is for sale for $135,000.

Stroll to the delicately wrought wishing well with its sculpted marble base and dangling vines. Looking north from the wishing well, you’ll see the main entrance to the park and the Spanish Colonial Revival administration building. Inside you can pick up a map to the grave sites of other stars buried here.

Walk south and turn left toward the obelisk. Near the fifth palm on the left is the marker for Carl (Alfalfa) Switzer, the precocious, whiny, freckle-faced star in the “Our Gang” series.

Continue walking past the obelisk to the pond. Walk over the ramp onto the island in the pond. The ornate mausoleum was built for William Andrews Clark, the founder of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Stroll north around the lily pond. Twin crypts at the north end mark the resting place of Cecil B. DeMille and his wife. Near the water is buried Virginia Rappe, the young actress whose tragic murder at a sex party led to the “Fatty” Arbuckle scandal. A secret admirer, producer Henry Lehrman, visited her grave site once a week until his death in 1946. He is buried next to her.

Marion Davies’ Grave

The neo-Classic white marble mausoleum marked “DOVRAS” is the final resting place of Marion Davies, actress and companion of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. Next to her beneath the white marble bench lies Tyrone Power, who died of a heart attack in Madrid while filming “Solomon and Sheba.” Ironically, his stage actor father also died of a heart attack while performing.

Walk inside the Cathedral Mausoleum to view the grave sites of other Hollywood greats: Peter Lorre, the gentle-voiced, frog-eyed, villainous character actor, and Rodolfo Guglielmi Valentino, better known as Rudolph Valentino, whose grave has become a shrine for countless thousands.